Islam in Turkmenistan: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Turkmenistan

The Muslim conquest of Turkmenistan started by Al-Ahnaf bnu QaisAttamimi in 643/22H during the reign of Caliph Omar bnul Khattab.Passing from current Iran, he conquered the city of Mary and reachedAmu Darya River, which separates Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It wasunder the rule of the Muslim Khanate of Khiva, which ruled this areafrom 1511/916H to 1920/1338H. The Russian conquest of Turkmenistanstarted with the capture of Turkmenbasey on the Caspian Sea in1869/1285H from tis Khanate. Then the Russian conquest was completedin 1881/1298H. It was then named Trans-Caspian Oblast, then TurkmenSoviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in 1925/1343H. It gained its independenceupon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991/1412H. CurrentTurkmenistan has an area of 488,100 sq km

The 1897 Russian Empire census indicated that Muslims made up86.1% of the total population of Turkmenistan in its current borders. Thisestimate is based on Transcaspian Oblast excluding Mangyshlak Uyezdwhich is in Kazakhstan.

Censuses since 1926 collected ethnic affiliation demography of thepopulation, about fifty of whom are Muslim. The top sixteen Muslimethnicities in Turkmenistan from largest in number are Turkmen, Uzbek,Kazakh, Tatar, Azeri, Balochi, Lezgin, Persian, Bashkir, Kurd, Tajik,Karakalpak, Lak, Dargin, Uighur and Afghan. The number of membersof each of these ethnicities since 1926 is provided in Table 2.2.6a. As thename of the country suggests, almost 80% of Muslims are Turkmen.

Based on ethnic census data and as shown in Table 2.2.6b, the Muslimpopulation increased in number but decreased in percentage from 0.87million or 86.9% in 1926, to 0.96 million or 76.7% in 1939. The decrease inpercentage is due to the Russification policy of the Soviet Union. TheMuslim population then continued to increase in both percentage andnumber to 1.18 million or 78.2% in 1959, to 1.75 million or 81.3% in 1970, to 2.3 million or 83.8% in 1979, to 3.1 million or 87.5% in 1989, to 4.0million or 91.2% in 1995, to 4.5 million or 93.4% in 2012. According tosurvey data, the percentage of Muslims was 93.3% in 2000 [DHS] and92.75% in 2005 [ABM].

The ethnic Russians decreased from 9.5% in 1989, to 6.7% in 1995, to5.1% in 2012. The Ukrainians and Armenians decreased from 1.0% and0.9% in 1989 to 0.5% and 0.8% in 1995, to 0.2% and 0.4% in 2012,respectively.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of the Muslim populationcontinues to increase by a half of a percentage point per decade; then theMuslim population is expected to be around eight million in the secondhalf of this century, reaching 96% by 2050 and 98% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Turkmenistan

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.